


Our Flaws

by westandvigilant



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-25
Updated: 2016-04-25
Packaged: 2018-06-04 08:28:55
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,362
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6650185
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/westandvigilant/pseuds/westandvigilant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>idk do you ever think a modern au enjolras would just be shitty at relationships because sex is thing that he wants but doesn’t feel the need to deal with people’s bullshit? (until he does)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Our Flaws

**Author's Note:**

> prompt fill: you have always worn your flaws upon your sleeve; and i have always buried them deep beneath the ground.

_When all of your flaws._   
_And all of my flaws are counted._

_—-_

The dance floor is nearly deserted, the late hour beginning to seep into every crack of the reception.

An untrained eye - a sleepy eye - might see the perfection in Enjolras’ squared shoulders as they dance, but it might not catch the way his hand at Éponine’s hip pulls her in too close. The way he waits until the last moment to lead her into the next step, triumphant in the brush of her skin against his chest. Inwardly satisfied in the blush staining her cheeks.

He follows her eyes as she scans the room, her gaze landing unceremoniously upon her new fiancé, a man that her mouth said she loved but her body language said smothered her.

“Come upstairs with me,” he asks, leaning in close, his eyelashes grazing her brow bone.

 

Éponine jerks back, but she matches his step. “You’re so delusional it’s almost quaint,” her scarlet lips curl ferociously over the ‘q’ and he pulls her even closer, bringing them cheek to cheek. “I’m not going to ditch my best friends wedding for a quickie in your hotel room… And besides, I’m engaged. You know that.”

“I know that.” The music crescendos and he surprises her with a spin, her feet stumbling with movement for a halting moment before he catches her in a dip. He draws her up slowly, the song beating out it’s final melody as he informs her: “I just don’t particularly care.”

The straggling audience claps for the band as he brings her into a hug that lingers a little too long, a little too intimate. “Ditch him,” he whispers. “Tell him it’s late. Tell him you’ll be up later. Tell him whatever you’d like, but come upstairs with me.”

She should remember him well enough to know that he always gets what he wants.

—-

_You have always worn your flaws upon your sleeve.  
And I have always buried them deep beneath the ground._

—-

He hides it well, just how little regard he pays to the connective threads that bind those around him. Hidden so neatly behind his dashing figure and orderly appearance. Leather gloves to disguise meandering fingers. An upturned collar to shield his knowing smirk. Soft lips that exist solely to blur the line between friends, colleagues, and lovers.

His heart is a nomad buried beneath waistcoats and silken shirts.

The first time they fucked he still wore Grantaire’s teeth marks on his hipbones. Not that she saw it until she had peeled off his pressed slacks, leaving him stripped and true, right in front of her.

It wasn’t until that moment, that first moment in the dark of his room, that he let her see him laid bare. Branded by another, yet still sliding his elegant fingers down her thighs and into the heat that had been building between them for months. Following lust and love like the whims he denied himself in all other aspects of life.

“Ruin me,” he demanded.

Huskily, lazily, she replied, “My pleasure,” before they devoured each other whole.

—-

_Dig them up. Let’s finish what we’ve started.  
Dig them up. So nothing’s left unturned._

_—-_

“You are every inch perfection,” he says in a stage whisper, yanking her dress to her hips as she straddles him. His voice echoes unnaturally off the sparse motel walls. “My queen, my goddess. The light and glory of my every waking moment.” Éponine presses him into the mattress while he chuckles. “Is that the kind of shit he tells you?”

Enjolras’ words ring too true, the stilted words too reminiscent of her fiancé for comfort, so she slaps him hard against his stupid plush mouth. It earns her another taunting chuckle. Enjolras barely has time to lick his stinging lips before her mouth smashes against his once more, her fingers tugging at his hair and coaxing him closer.

“You should watch your fucking mouth,” she warns between kisses. Then she laughs and it’s throaty and confusing and intoxicating. He sits up, kissing her hard and raw with too much teeth and heavy breathing. When she realizes that she has the upper hand, that he would follow her to Hell and back for just one more touch, she takes off her dress and turns away, showing him the smooth line of her back against the darkness. “You shouldn’t speak to me like that.”

Enjolras places a kiss against her jaw and draws a line with his fingertip between her breasts, down her stomach, to her center.”You want me to tell you the truth?” He presses a finger inside of her as she nods, tipping her head back onto his shoulder with a gasp. ”You are everything I can’t forget. The darkness that haunts me in my quietest moments. You are sin. You are sovereign.” She doubles over, teeth gritted to muffle her moan, but he wrenches her back into his chest, savoring the feel of her body shuddering at his touch once more. “You are my favorite kind of chaos.”

—-

_All of your flaws and all of my flaws._   
_Are laid out one by one._

_—-_

Éponine always looked like a disaster and she reveled in it. What he sees is what he gets. And what he sees is the tiny, beat up oxfords she used to tip-toe into his life. Secondhand crop-tops and cutoff shorts, stubbornly clinging to life by just a thread. A rat’s nest of hair, either up or down, but always like an exposed nerve ending. Teeming with an electric energy, a sizzling something that swirled in a seductive pull. 

Messy breakups, passionate affairs, rough sex; she wore these like a tattoo written in winged eyeliner and stiletto heels.

Towards the end of their affair, she wore the marks on her bare neck. Proudly. Purple and red marks branded across her skin by some other man’s mouth. For everyone to see. Daring Enjolras to notice only to mock him when he did.

The day he pointed them out was the day of their undoing. Plates and glasses shattered against the floor while she informed Enjolras how this new guy put her on a pedestal. How he made her feel like perfection incarnate.

And only the wrong answers spilled from Enjolras’ mouth, while he tried and failed to tell her that he’d rather make her feel real. That in a life filled with ideals, he loved her because she was that only tangible thing he could find. That it was the best thing he could say about anyone, anywhere.

Love is what he tried to say, but his eloquent mouth had failed him. Mere centimeters from her face, the air heated and all consuming, he ripped the last plate from her hands.

“If you can’t change then you can leave,” she growled.

Seething, with perfect enunciation, he hissed, “My pleasure,” before dropping the plate to the floor.

—-

_Look at the wonderful mess that we made._   
_We pick ourselves undone._

_—-_

“You don’t have to leave,” he whispers. “You don’t have to go back to him." Her copper skin is soaking in the morning sunlight, leaving him no choice but to hang on for dear life or be tossed into real darkness once more.

Éponine twists the band on her finger, but she turns into him and pulls the sheet over her shoulder. “I have to.”

"No, you don’t.” He doesn’t beg. He doesn’t plead. But his arm wrapped tight around her waist says  _I miss you_. His lips against her neck say  _I need you_. The way he smooths her hair away from her face says  _I love you_.

And she listens. She knows. She closes her eyes and lays her head against his chest, curling into his body like it’s the last piece to a puzzle she had given up on long ago.

“Thank you for making my life a cluster fuck again,” she sighs.

Sleepily, his eyes still closed, he murmurs, “My pleasure,” before falling into contented sleep.

—-

_All of your flaws and all of my flaws,_   
_When they have been exhumed._   
_We’ll see that we need them to be who we are._   
_Without them we’d be doomed._


End file.
